Strips of material are used for manufacture of diapers and other absorbent products. The strips are cut on the manufacturing line at longitudinally spaced transverse cut lines to divide the strip into individual sheet elements each used in the manufacture of a respective absorbent product. Other products are also manufactured which require sheet elements cut from strips of a material other than of the above non-woven fibrous material. The present invention is therefore directed not only to absorbent products but also to any other material which can be formed from strips as set out hereinafter. Such strips may not be compressible.
As disclosed in application No. 08/948258 above, sometimes these strips are also die cut to provide different widths for shaping of the products to better match the body of the user and for better aesthetics.
However in most constructions the strip is of constant width and of a constant construction along its length. The cuing action can therefore occur at any position along the length of the strip and depends solely upon the length of the sheet element required.
The present invention is concerned with strips for cutting into individual sheet elements whether the strip is constant along its length or whether it has variations in width or other feature which identify the locations of the individual sheets to be cut from the strip.
The strip for cutting into individual sheets is conventionally supplied from a roll of the strip since rolling of the strip forms a package in which the strip has little or no distortion which could interfere with the proper formation of the strip into the sheet elements or the proper performance of the sheet elements in the finished product.
Previously packages of a continuous strip of material have been formed using a technique known as "festooning" in which the strip is folded back and forth to lay a series of strip portions back and forth with each portion being folded relative to the next about a line transverse to the strip. The technique of festooning has been available for many years and is used in packaging many different types of materials but particularly material of a fibrous nature such as fabric, non-woven strips and the like. In this technique, the strip is conventionally guided into a receptacle such as a cardboard box while a first reciprocating movement causes portions of the strip to be laid across the receptacle and folded back and forth and a second reciprocating movement causes the positions of the portions to be traversed relative to the receptacle transversely to the portions. Normally the receptacle comprises a rigid rectangular container at least partly of cardboard having a base and four upstanding sides.
The above applications disclose a new technique for packaging a strip in which the strip is folded back and fort to form stacks of the strip.
However both the conventional festooning technique and the improved technique have some possibility of compromising the performance of the strip at the fold lines which are essential to the package structure. The performance may be compromised by crushing a compressible material, by creasing a stiff or plastic material or simply by providing a visible fold line which detracts from the visual appearance of the finished product